Jane Hardy, the fifth-generation CEO of Brinly-Hardy Co. in Jeffersonville, Ind., says that of all the products the company makes, her favorite is the POWERtach plow. When she describes the plow, which features a hydraulic blade operated via a joystick, her voice carries a smile.
“It’s fun to plow snow with it,” says Hardy, 51. “My boys love it, too. We live somewhere where it doesn’t snow all that often, so it never feels like a chore.”
That technology is a far cry from the improved horse-drawn plow developed by Kentuckian John Brinly in 1836. Brinly found that attaching a metal saw blade to the wood moldboard made it easier to manage the sticky clay soil prevalent in the South.
James E. Hardy, Jane’s great-great-grandfather, partnered with Brinly to improve manufacturing and distribution. The company was named the Brinly-Hardy Co. upon incorporation in 1839. By the 1880s, the product catalog included a broad range of plows for different soil types. The Brinly family sold their interest in the company to the Hardys in the late 1890s.
Staying relevant in a rapidly changing world can be a challenge for any company. A company that has been around for 175 years has had to face that challenge multiple times. “One of the most significant things that, I think, has allowed us to stick around has been the ability to flex and change,” says Hardy.
Adapting and evolving
To cope with a labor shortage during World War II, for example, Brinly-Hardy hired inmates upon their release from the local prison, Jane Hardy says. To counteract the nationwide wage freeze during the war, Hardy’s grandfather, Col. James E. Hardy II, instituted a profit-sharing plan. (Handing out profit-sharing checks “is one of the favorite parts of my job,” Hardy says.)
President Carter’s 1980 embargo on grain shipments to the Soviet Union—a punitive measure in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan—resulted in an oversupply and reduced grain prices in the U.S. Amid the economic hardships, farmers cut back on farm equipment purchases. In the previous decade Jane’s father, James E. Hardy III, had launched a separate wholesale business selling combines and other ag equipment in five states. Because of the troubles affecting the market, Brinly-Hardy liquidated the wholesale business and “put all our efforts back into manufacturing,” Jane Hardy says.
That included entry into manufacturing residential lawn equipment, sold under the Brinly brand through retailers worldwide. “The credit goes to two really wonderful engineers that worked here for about 40 years,” Hardy says. “Moving into lawn and garden was the thing that allowed us to completely reinvent who we are and still stay connected to the customer base.”
In 2000, the company moved from its Louisville, Ky., headquarters to 20 acres in nearby Jeffersonville, Ind., following an offer by the city of Louisville to acquire the property for conversion into a minor-league baseball stadium, Louisville Slugger Field, home of the Triple A Louisville Bats. The timing of the acquisition offer coincided with a push by Home Depot to grow its lawn and garden departments. “We knew we couldn’t take on that additional volume and do it well without moving,” Hardy says, “because we were in such a mishmash of buildings and our processes were not well aligned in our old facility.”
The majority of the company’s board embraced the opportunity to relocate and acquire a new customer. “My father, who was still active on the board at the time, abstained from that vote because of the investment and the risk,” Hardy says. “He used to say, ‘When you dance with a gorilla, the gorilla usually leads.’ And he was absolutely right. But we managed to make it a really healthy part of our business, and we love that relationship [with Home Depot].” She adds that the company would not have been able to support the demand from the home-improvement giant if it hadn’t moved to the new, expanded facility.
Leadership development
Hardy, who studied art and art history at Colorado College, says neither she nor her father had predicted that she would spend her career with the company. After her 1984 graduation, she took what she thought would be a temporary job in the customer service department. Handling customer complaints, she reflects, “is a fabulous place to start if you want to learn a business and learn what you need to do to improve the business.” From there she moved into human resources, and then to the sales and marketing department. While working in that position, which involved traveling to meet with customers, she realized that she wanted to stay with the family business, she says.
Hardy was named president when her father retired in 1994 and became CEO and chair of the board after his death in 2001. She says she was able to turn her status as a female family member into an advantage when dealing with customers.
“I think when you’re in a family business there’s an automatic default… People assume that you’re there because of genetics, not because of smarts, and when you can prove that you really do know what you’re talking about—[that] you really do understand the products and the markets—then customers tend to change their thinking and they’re generally surprised, and then it gives you—I don’t know, almost added credibility,” Hardy reflects. “And then when you throw in female in an industry like ours, there’s a whole lot of surprise if you know what you’re talking about. In a sales job it makes it nice because you immediately become a little bit more memorable.”
To gain business experience, Hardy joined YPO and enrolled in a leadership program at Harvard Business School. “That was hugely impactful for me,” she says, “because I realized that so much of business is common sense, and it gave me great confidence.”
Hardy says her father was “a big softie—huge heart—and he wasn’t afraid to show it.” She recalls that he would tear up while reporting bad news at company meetings. “I learned that being that open and honest was effective and built the trust,” she says. “I’m a lot like him in that way.”
On the other hand, there were some elements of James Hardy’s management style that his daughter opted not to emulate. “He used to show up for meetings late, which was a problem,” Jane Hardy says. “And he would shift the focus to whatever he missed. It drove me insane, and other people too.”
Hardy’s brother and sister, Ed and Susan, are shareholders; both have worked for the company in the past. Older brother Ed joined the company in the early ’80s. “One of the reasons why I was so involved with the company as a young man is that I loved my father so much,” says Ed Hardy, who would go on to discover a passion for teaching. “If my sister hadn’t been interested in the business I probably would have still been there, but she was much more interested in the business than I was.”
While Ed worked at the company, his father took him to a number of seminars led by pioneering family business consultant Léon Danco. “His point was—and it really hit home with me—if you’re not working at the family business, you really shouldn’t be involved in any way or form other than on the periphery,” Ed recalls. “So I took a back seat to [Jane], and the company has done well ever since.”
Jane Hardy and her mother, Barbara, serve on the board along with four independent directors. The corporate counsel serves as board secretary. Hardy says the independent directors “care just as much about the legacy of the business as I do.” She adds, “Our board is made up of people that we’ve chosen because of their skill set, not because of relationships, so in all cases I didn’t know the board members before we asked them to join the board. We hired them because they had expertise in an area that we needed. And I think that that’s very important.”
The board meets annually with shareholders. “There’s always a part of the meeting when I leave the room so that the family can ask questions of the board directly,” Hardy says. “I think that’s a little unusual, but it gives everybody a much higher level of comfort.” The board, Hardy says, is “who I am accountable to, and my family is so supportive of them because they know how we chose them. They know them.”
“Jane is a very astute businessperson and she’s actively involved in the organizations that help her learn about the best way to run your company and make sure it’s positioned for the future. So she’s always willing to look at how to improve things and she’s not stuck in the past,” says non-family director Diane Medley, managing partner of Mountjoy Chilton Medley LLP, an accounting firm. “This is a very old company… but her leadership is very forward-thinking, and you don’t ever feel like there’s ‘Well, that’s the way we’ve always done it’ type of talk. I’ve never heard her say that, or anyone on her team. That’s unusual for a company with the legacy this one has.”
“If I had a chance to leave a message to people that care about family business, it would be that boards are wonderful,” Hardy says. “I’ve never had anyone turn me down for a board position, and we don’t pay a tremendous amount for our board fees. People genuinely want to do it because they’re businesspeople and they love the history of our business and they want to see it succeed. And they’re such smart people, and they’re hugely helpful to me.”
Lean manufacturing
Like many other companies, Brinly-Hardy had to make adjustments during the 2008-09 recession. “Since we primarily make durable consumer goods, we planned for a significant hit,” Hardy says. The company laid off 15% of its staff, instituted pay cuts for managers and suspended the employer match to its 401(k) plan. Eventually the cuts and the 401(k) match were reinstated and employees were made whole, Hardy says. The company has weathered the storm and is hiring again, she adds.
Brinly-Hardy survived the 2008-09 downturn by taking a “full dive” into lean manufacturing, Hardy says. She visited other companies—many of them run by YPO friends—to see this concept in action. “So many companies were cutting investment and shrinking, and at the time we knew what we needed to do to survive, and we said, ‘Let’s bite the bullet and invest now,’ ” she recalls.
“I knew for a long time that we wanted to do it, but it’s not an easy thing to change a culture, and that’s really what it requires,” Hardy says. “And when we decided to go all out was when the economy really took the dive in 2008. We started researching, we knew we had the time and we knew we were financially sound enough to invest in it… We knew that we could really pound into this and make it a success.”
Brinly-Hardy focused on the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement known as kaizen. The company held a series of events, facilitated by a consulting firm, in which cross-functional teams observed manufacturing processes, brainstormed better ways of doing things and then reconfigured cells to improve the workflow. The company’s first kaizen event, in August 2009, “lit the fire inside our organization for doing this,” Hardy says. “We invested heavily, and there’s been no turning back.”
Hardy says the biggest challenge for companies that institute lean manufacturing processes is to ensure perpetuation of the lean systems. “You make all this wonderful change and then there’s turnover in the cell or turnover in the company,” she explains. To prevent backsliding when new team members come aboard, Hardy says, the company is being judicious about hiring people who “speak the same lean language that we do.”
Medley says the focus on waste reduction has paid off. “I think there’s been a lot more recognition of the need for accountability for the leadership team, the internal team,” she says. In addition to looking at revenue and profit, the company is now setting measurable goals in areas such as shipment error rates and order turnaround time.
“I’ve seen [the changes] actually materialize on their balance sheet, with additional capital, and the lack of need to borrow money,” Medley says. This enabled Hardy to “grow the business, rather than just fund receivables and inventory,” Medley says. “They want to be the best and they’re willing to make changes—maybe sometimes painful changes—to improve their company.”
Growth through acquisition
In 2008, Brinly-Hardy acquired Spyker Spreaders, a line of commercial turf care products for professional landscapers and grounds crews that complements Brinly-Hardy’s residential line.
This summer, the company completed its acquisition of Louisville Tin & Stove Co., manufacturer of Cozy residential gas and propane heating equipment. This counter-seasonal business, a new area for Brinly-Hardy, involves similar manufacturing processes. “We’ll do with [the Cozy] brand what we’ve done for Spyker, which is really grow it and expand it, so we’re very excited about it,” Hardy says.
Brinly-Hardy’s embrace of lean manufacturing “freed up a lot of capacity for their team to grow,” Medley notes. “And the fastest way to grow was to acquire another company to fill in that gap.”
Hardy notes that her board played an important role in the success of the Cozy acquisition. After reviewing the documentation, the directors raised two concerns: one cultural, and one related to the transaction. “They challenged us to go back and work through those pieces a little bit harder,” Hardy recalls. “We went back, and we ended up being able to negotiate a much better deal, much lower risk, than we ever would have dreamed that we could have.” In addition, she says, the board “challenged us to make sure that the team was 100% emotionally committed to this transaction, because it’s fairly large and the integration with this other company is critical… so they wanted us to make sure we were all really all in. And it helped us decide that we really were.”
More acquisitions are planned for the future. “Our goal is to be around for Generation 6,” says Hardy, whose oldest child is 16. Because of the investments in growth, Brinly-Hardy is now “five times larger than we were when I took over in ’94,” Hardy says.
Last May the company celebrated its 175th anniversary at a game between the Louisville Bats and the Pawtucket Red Sox at Louisville Slugger Field, the site of its old warehouse. Employees and board members, along with their families, were invited.
“It was a great evening,” Hardy recalls. “The only sad part was I skipped the ball when I threw out the first pitch. But what can I say? That’s a longer distance than most of us could ever imagine.”
Sally M. Snell is a writer based in Lawrence, Kan.
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